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I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty, and Orion walks by and doesn’t speak- Sylvia Plath.

1.

THE VALLEY OF THE LOST BUDDHA, CENTRAL AFGHANISTAN.

Just before sunset the music of children’s laughter mingled with birdsong in a grove of yellow and green plane trees next to a rocky stream. In brightly coloured headscarves and waistcoats a group of Hazara children chased a tattered rag ball, while we videoed them against the sun. Moving in slow motion, backlit by golden light, the children were Technicolor spirits floating in space.

As we worked, a boy stood next to me smoking a hand rolled cigarette. He was very young, about twelve-years-old, with luminous green eyes and a shy child’s smile. His black clothing and AK forty-seven automatic rifle marked him as a member of the Taliban, but he was too gentle to be a fanatic. The rag ball rolled towards us, and as the boy bent to pick it up, he flew suddenly backwards as if hit by an invisible truck. There was no cry, no gasp of exertion, just the soft thud of his body landing in the dust. Later I remembered hearing a faint hollow pop, like someone tapping a watermelon. There had been no sound of gunfire, no wasp buzz of a bullet; the hot metal had flown silent on a following breeze. The last few seconds had passed with nothing more than the song of kingfishers in the trees.

Two little girls ran to join the game but then froze, looking down in wonder as a pale angel with a crimson halo lay fading in the dusk. In that instant I threw myself onto them, flattening the three of us onto the ground. When we landed, I cracked my forehead on a rock and saw a bright flash of rainbow corona. Face down, with only one eye free of grit I stared at the little boy just centimetres away. His skin was pale porcelain, his sightless green eyes made of glass.

Lying across the whimpering children, feeling disembodied by shock, I burrowed into the dirt, my long black headscarf shutting out light.  In the crushed darkness, my vision flickered through the shimmering corona and I was watching my kid sister, Penelope, smooth blankets around her two little girls as they slept in the saffron glow of a nightlight. They were more than a memory, they were actually there, as if I was with Penny in the same room watching her children dream. For seconds they were solid and three-dimensional, then flickered like transparent holograms before coming back into focus. I could see a book lying on a chest of drawers, The Magic Faraway Tree. The clock on their wall said midnight.